Outdoor cabinets for housing electrical components are widely used in cable television (CATV) and other kinds of systems. These cabinets must protect the electrical components housed therein from harsh environmental conditions such as adverse weather. In addition, these cabinets must be secure to protect the electrical components inside from tampering and vandalism. It is also desirable that these cabinets allow easy access to the electrical components therein to facilitate their installation and servicing. Also, these cabinets should be as small and inconspicuous as possible. Finally, these cabinets should be relatively inexpensive to manufacture.
Conventional cabinets of the type just described have some of the foregoing characteristics, but they also have several drawbacks. Specifically, the space inside such cabinets is not always efficiently utilized. For example, the space occupied by attached cables sometimes prevents components from being mounted in a tightly packaged manner. Also, additional space is typically required to allow access to the components during installation and servicing. Without this access space, components may have to be removed from the cabinet in order to be serviced. Finally, conventional cabinets are unable to house the larger numbers of components required by CATV systems.
It is therefore an object of the present invention to create an outdoor cabinet suitable for use in cable telephony systems. It is another object of the present invention to provide a low cost, compact, outdoor electrical cabinet. It is a further object of the present invention to provide an efficient way to mount electrical components inside a cabinet that allows the components housed therein to be easily installed and serviced while minimizing the overall cabinet size.